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January 30, 2006
It's Still The Movies, Stupid... Part 2
Part 1So what were the movie stories of Sundance 2006?
There was a group of movies that focused on women, many of which were directed by women. And there was not a commercial picture in the lot.
There is some support out there for Stephanie Daley, a two-woman drama about the power of pregnancy and the loss of same. But few of the reviews were stellar and the material is a very, very, very tough sell.
Maggie Gyllenhaal takes risks with Sherrybaby, but he movie feels like a long first act waiting for the filmmaker to get to the good stuff… the good stuff other than Ms. G's repeated nudity. The oddest thing about the film, about which few spoke of more than the sex, is that the sex wasn't very sexy, a film like The Cooler being significantly more intimate than this intimate portrait.
I didn't see Joey Lauren Adams' Come Early Morning. Of these films, it was the most warmly spoken of, but everyone I spoke to about it also added the "but it's a really small Sundance-y picture."
Stay centers on a woman who performs fellatio on her dog and suffers with the potential reaction of the people in her life to finding out this secret, comedically, for the rest of the movie. The attempt to do a conventional romantic comedy with this giant dog dick joke in the middle is interesting… but unfortunately, more interesting than the storyteling and the central character.
Robin Tunney proves yet again that she is ready to return to the big time in Open Window. But the movie is just so horrible. It's the story of a sweet, tough, regular girl who gets raped and has to fight her way back to some normalcy for herself and her fiancé. But in spite of a strong lead performance, she is hamstrung by a terribly unemotional male lead and weak cameos by Cybill Sheppard and Elliot Gould. Tunney's nakedness in the film is giving almost too much for her art, more memorable than much of the drama. Though I liked Michelle Monaghan a lot, Tunney should have had her role in North Country, she could have played the Anne Hathaway role in Brokeback Mountain, and she would have been right at home somewhere in a movie like Broken Flowers. Someone will eventually give her a real shot again. And then the off-screen issues will or will not rear their head. I hope not.
Really, the two most interesting women's performances I saw at Sundance this year were JR Valentin as Maximo Oliveros in The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros and Chiwetel Ojiofor as Lola in Kinky Boots. Ironically, the two women who show up on screen with penises are the only two who are given subtle, complex, unexpected notes to play, though Ojiofor's drag queen is a bit more in the Hollywood-By-Way-Of-The-Full-Monty than the remarkable intimacy of Maximo Oliveros.
Even the porn movie about porno movies, Destricted, paid homage to the penis in an incredibly outsized way over the vagina. (And as MCN reported yesterday, the Jury/Audience Award winning Quinceanera, dubbed "Friends Without Money" by one wag, turns out to be co-directed by a very talented guy who also happens to have cut his teeth very successfully on gay porn.) Once male directors (5 of the 7) start objectifying the penis, you would think they'd stop objectifying women. Instead, they still objectify the women, but in incredibly banal ways. (The most humor shown in the film was by Marina Abramovic, who brought Balkan folklore to life with a blind eye to any objectification at all.)
Speaking of gay cinema, in a season where there is a lot of gay representation in theatrically released films and in the awards season, it was a rarity at Sundance. Even though some of the 33 competition docs seemed likely to be about the gay experience, only one was, small town gay bar (their lack of capitals). Likewise, only Puccini for Beginners and the aforementioned The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros focus primarily on gay characters in the two dramatic competitions.
I was talking to someone on the airplane home and saying that a very liberal-minded friend was gossiping about one of the subjects of a doc - in which her sexuality was not an issue - who was seen dancing and kissing a woman at a party the other night. And what I thought was, with due love to the gossiper, how far can we be advancing as a society if we still need to discuss the gay private life of someone who has been presented in far more complexity than that regarding non-sexual issues?
The same is true of Sundance. For many years, the large percentage of "gay films" and their success in the awards has been a subject of eye (and log) rolling. Not this year.
What the juries did roll over for this year was Iraq and the struggle against poverty as embodied by Iraq In Fragments, God Grew Tired of Us, In The Pit, and De NADIE. The choice of Iraq In Fragments over other Iraq material, particularly the powerful look at the effects of war on American soldiers, The Ground Truth - a film that's just a name change away from being legend and a perfect part of a box set with Gunner Palace - seems to be classic Sundance, pulled towards the gravity of the exotic over the domestic.
And did the dramatic jury really need to encourage a new Ed Burns by giving Dito Montiel side awards for A Guide to Latter Day… uh… How To Recognize Your Saints?
The oddest thing about this odd year at Sundance was that I expect to hear a hum from the films we saw there, even though there are very few that really have people excited. I would be shocked, really, if next year's Oscar doc short list of 12 doesn't sport at least 6 Sundance 2006 titles. Of 16 Dramatic Competition titles, only one or two will fail to get either theatrical distribution or a pay-TV premiere window. Only 3 or 4 of the Premieres will disappear.
And there was even a work-in-progress that is actually a work in progress, the Sony Classics project, Who Killed The Electric Car? The material is exceptional and once re-editing into a three-act structure, it should be a documentary classic. (But really… it needs work… they have the material… but it needs work…)
The movie line-up at Sundance is very much like the indie business… confused. There was a lot of self-awareness out there, but not a lot of inspired audaciousness. There are always one or two great movies that Sundance misses in the massive work of sifting through primarily original, unrepresented material out there. But, all things considered, it is always a good bet that we had the chance to see most of the best of what is new out there in this year's 10 days in Park City. And sure, Ken Turan had to change his cell number when Paris Hilton refused to stop calling, but that was the exception to the rule. The hype was more a side dish than since the early days.
I've never been a big fan of birthdays and anniversaries. I prefer to live each day with as much enthusiasm as I can muster and not to concentrate it on one moment. Too much pressure. And so it goes for Sundance. Every birthday is not a big one. Even in a good year for sales, the total expended to buy distribution rights to these films is not enough to pay for the first 10 minutes of the upcoming Superman.
The indie world is under construction and so is Sundance. I get the feeling better days are coming. And Sundance is not just sitting around, waiting for it to happen. The World Cinema Competitions were better this year than last and will likely get better each year as it matures. So I look forward to 2007 with hope and I will look back at 2006 with wistful thanks.
There's no business like snow business.
January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 1
January 9, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 2
January 11 - Munich In Sequence | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3
January 12 - V For Vendetta
